Ineptitude and greatness

At the cost of sounding like a facist, I'd say that people actually don't know what they want. Its actually a few who tell them what they want and process it for them. People are happy for some time to be actually guided by this few (whom Ayn Rand would call the motors who run the world). And there are others who don't know what to do. Those who immediately come to mind are the HR managers of the company I am working in.

Six Sigma, CMM, PCMM and a plethora of those arconyms later, what stands out is their exemplary ineptitude. Now they have come up with a new form of harrassment. They call it background check. Agreed that it is a necessity because some people nowadays rely on forged documents to get into a company which is unearthed at a very late stage (if at all). So, now not only have they made the BG check mandatory (even for current employees), they have also made sure that its a real pain in the arse. One gets a new mail everyday as to what new documents one has to fill up and send to different people, only to get a new mail the next day that the documents need not have been sent where they were sent and the correct person to who they are supposed to be sent is also mentioned. Confusion rules roost.

Coming back to the real men, though it may not have been written as a tribute to the "producers" of the world, Stephen Spender's poem "I think Continually..", makes me think of them whenever I read the poem. What I find most fascinating about the poem is the last two lines of the middle stanza. We usually allow the world to finally get to us, but those who are truly great hold out. After the imagery weaved in the first stanza, the middle stanza goes on to state that..

What is precious is never to forget
The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.
Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light
Nor its grave evening demand for love.
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.

The poet then moves over to an entirely different level as he pays tribute to those "born of the sun" and ends in a flourish..

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields
See how these names are feted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life
Who wore at their hearts the fire's center.
Born of the sun they traveled a short while towards the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honor.

I strive for greatness...